


i'm right up the road (i'll share your load)

by thatiranianphantom



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Betty and Veronica Friendship, But like with her puppeting Betty and Jughead, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, It's Beronica finally getting the attention they deserve, It's basically B+V Friendship, S5 Speculation, Thanks terrible writing, Through the Years, beronica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatiranianphantom/pseuds/thatiranianphantom
Summary: Betty and Veronica meet when they are fifteen and have kissed within three days of meeting.It’s such a radical departure from the pastel monotony of Betty’s days that she begins to mark her life into pre and post-Veronica.The story of B and V, best friends, through the years.
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II, Betty Cooper & Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 24
Kudos: 46
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	i'm right up the road (i'll share your load)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so you made me do this again, you terrible, terrible writers. You made me come in and correct your mistakes. If you are not going to give the friendships the attention they so deserve, then I will do it. I will recognize Veronica Cecilia Lodge for the A+ friend she is, and I will have her puppet Betty and Jughead back together, and I will tell the story of B and V, an iconic pairing if ever there was one.
> 
> If you won't do it, I WILL. 
> 
> Anyway. This is our beloved B and V, with many sprinkling of Bughead.

Betty and Veronica meet when they are fifteen and have kissed within three days of meeting. 

It’s such a radical departure from the pastel monotony of Betty’s days that she begins to mark her life into pre and post-Veronica. 

She knows who Veronica was. She knows Veronica wrestles with how much of that is still in, especially given her parents and their scheming. It pains Betty inside sometimes to see their effect on her best friend, but she learns Veronica’s strength through this. 

She’s better than them. She’ll be better than them. The relationships they have are all skin deep. They’re conditional. 

Veronica’s devotion has never been anything but unconditional.

(Years later, they’ll still come back to the fact that Veronica was Betty’s first kiss.) 

_ B and V. Now that’s a name you can believe in. _

* * *

Through high school, they remain. They’re a port in a storm as the world swirls around them. 

And Veronica sacrifices. She gives pieces of herself, over and over, to those she loves. 

She saves the biggest part of herself for Betty.

_ We’ll never let a boy come between us _ , she says. 

It’s a pact. A rule, but rules are made to be broken. And as the swirling storm of trauma spins Betty round and round, and as what little she holds to prepares to dump her unceremoniously in the world called  _ adulthood _ , she slips. 

She slips and forgets to call out for her best friend to catch her. 

And in that, she lands squarely on Archie. 

_ It felt like we were meant to be best friends. Like it was our destiny.  _

* * *

It blows it up. It blows everything up. 

It whirls everyone away from her, but worst of all, it yanks Jughead and Veronica away.

It’s a little like looking back on a memory of a holiday past. Then, you sped through the motions—gifts, food, togetherness. You forgot to cherish it. You forgot to be there. 

And then it’s gone, and when you look back on the memory, you can physically feel the warmth from that time, the warmth you gave up, so now all you are is cold, and empty and alone. 

That’s college, for Betty. 

She’s alone, and it’s not just a physical sensation. It’s an emotional one. 

One decision. One wrong turn. One yes, and everything is gone.

She shivers through those days.

* * *

She’s an FBI agent. She’s good, and nobody questions her about her past. 

It’s, objectively, good. She goes on dates. One sticks, if it can be called that. 

So now, seven years after high school, she has friends, and a boyfriend. A mirror of her high school life, in a more mature setting.

She expects warmth, but all she feels is cold. 

She’s happy, but more in a moderate sense.

* * *

She supposes then that she is even grateful for mothmen. It doesn’t even feel like an odd sentiment to someone from Riverdale. 

It spins her back, and then, in front of her, there’s Veronica, and Jughead, and Betty feels as if she’s been left outside in the middle of summer. As if she’s found a piece in the puzzle that makes up her life, the very thing that was missing, and slides it into place. It’s a breath of relief. A soft exhalation of “oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.” 

It’s not easy. What exists between she and her former best friend is not a gap, but rather a gaping chasm, and there are many, many times where she feels like there will never be enough time, apologies, or grace to fill it. 

But that’s the thing she learns - Veronica has always had enough love for both of them, and that is what sustains them. The first time she is called B again, she feels tears spring forth. 

(One of her New Haven friends had tried, way back when, to call her this. It’s a visceral reaction, the way she tells them no, the  _ don’t call me that _ . It never felt right, she supposes, from someone else’s lips.) 

It’s mended slowly. Patching a hole, it’s a process. A process that, at times, Betty wants to rush through. But she had Veronica’s trust, and she tossed it away. She will not do that again. So if she needs to go slow, if she needs to build up their time together, if she needs to wait years for a simple hug, she will do that. 

She does, and slowly, the broken pieces are let go, and they build something better, something more profound. Something they couldn’t have accomplished in high school. Something they needed to be different people to realize. 

And the day comes, where Veronica lays her head on Betty’s shoulder, and there is nothing else that could be like this.

_ Life is an awful, ugly place not to have a best friend.  _

* * *

As she does, Veronica moves the people around her forward. She nudges Toni and Cheryl back together. She “casually” introduces JB to a very pretty girl and watches the girl’s cheeks turn pink. A marriage certificate turns up on FP and Alice’s doorstep, one neither of them remember ordering.

And she swings her and Betty’s joined hands between them, until pulling Betty down to a booth at Pops where Jughead Jones sits, disentangling their hands and laying Betty’s shaking, sweaty palm on top of the hand of the boy with whom Betty will spend her life. 

It’s a scene she repeats at their wedding.

She spins Betty around the dancefloor at the reception, both of them giggling madly, happiness spilling out of Betty like bubbles.

* * *

She’s a wonder, their V. 

Unflinchingly kind, unbearably generous. She feels for all of them, even when she hurts the most. 

There are bruises on her. There are bruises long faded, by those with whom she shares blood. Those are bruises of the emotional sort. 

But there are other bruises, and Betty sees them, because she knows. She knows what it’s like to be everything for everyone. She knows what it’s like to carry a storm inside of you, to be crudely stitched together, one spark away from a fire.

So when she sees the purpling on her best friend’s skin, she knows. She weaves her fingers through Veronica’s. She guides her best friend’s head to her shoulder. She feels her gut twist at the thought of someone loving Veronica anything less than perfectly, anything less than what she deserves. 

Betty has never contemplated murder more than she has in that season of their lives. She has never before understood murders of passion so acutely. 

But if she went there, she couldn’t be here, and here is where Veronica needs her. 

So Cheryl takes care of it, and in a metaphorical sense, she hands Veronica the scissors to sever the last link with her family. 

That family was only a starting point anyway. A foundation on which to build. And their built family, this family of choice, is unconventional, imperfect, and the warmest thing Betty has ever known. 

* * *

Veronica is okay. She keeps moving, because she’s Veronica. The love she finds is more immense, fuller and better than it ever was. 

And as before, she keeps the biggest part of her for Betty. For B and V, always. 

She breathes out a shaky sigh as she lays a hand on Betty’s swollen belly, and the baby always kicks best for its Auntie V. 

She’s a hand Betty presses bruises into in the delivery room. She is of a small number of people to hear William Forsythe Cooper Jones’ first cries.

And she is there for everything. 

Family life waxes and wanes, hers and Veronica’s. But there is happiness. There is a joy like they could not have imagined as fifteen-year-old high school students. 

And when Veronica’s turn comes, Betty brings her ice chips, soothes her hair back, and holds her hand in the delivery room. 

“My muse and guide, B,” Veronica sighs exhaustedly.

Betty smiles, strokes a piece of hair from Veronica’s face. “I’m giving you the tour,” she says, and it’s not the most eloquent thing she’s ever said, but it takes them both back to fifteen, and as always, Veronica laces her fingers through Betty’s, and they are B and V.

* * *

They are B and V long after shoots of gray poke through their hair. After soccer practices and proms and suspensions and couples vacations and magnolia cupcakes from New York. 

Through weddings, funerals, births and deaths. 

Their husbands joke about how inextricable they are, as do most others. Betty never minds. Best friends are forever, and she made that vow when she was fifteen. 

When she was fifteen, she thought how it was then is how it would be forever, but adulthood hardens and softens people. It teaches her, as it teaches everyone, that there are times spent alone. It teaches her that friendship is simultaneously the strongest and most fragile thing in the world. It teaches her that sometimes it’s not a soft place to land, but a hand to hold when her whole body throbs. 

It’s not salvation from pain. It’s someone to sit down in the pain with you. 

And she does that, as she always has and will, when the tests come back positive. When the beautiful raven hair falls out. When the doctors shake their heads, months later. When the cancer spreads and still, it’s met with a smile and a “don’t be sad, B.” 

She holds the hand of her best friend, and she will do that until both of them are gone. Until that day, she lays flowers on the stone containing the name Veronica Cecilia Lodge, and runs her fingers over the engraving  _ best friend _ . 

The flowers are always yellow; the color of friendship. 

_ Because I love you, B. You’re my best friend.  _

**Author's Note:**

> I want it on the record that this was going to be a tiny drabble. 
> 
> Three hundred words, at most. 
> 
> Wasn't even going to post it here, started it in a Tumblr post. 
> 
> Well, goes to show how I can't make anything short. I think the first sign that I'd lost control of the length was when I moved it to a word doc.


End file.
